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UPDATE 2 – 2017/02/06

DO NOT INSTALL KB3216755 if you don’t need it. Huge memory leak reported to associated with this. If you need it I’d consider all my options.

UPDATE – GET KB3216755

As you can read it the comments, Microsoft reached out and confirms the issues are fixed as part of KB3216755 => https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4011347/windows-10-update-kb3216755. I commend them for responding so quickly and getting it sorted. Do not that at the time of writing this (late on January 30th CET) the Windows Sever 2016 update isn’t in the Windows Catalog yet, only the Windows 10 ones. But Microsoft confirms you should install the update on their blog

The issue

Good morning. A quick blog post to give a heads up to my readers who might not be subscribed to Anton Gostev (Veeam) his “The Word Form Gostev”. It concerns a warning on Windows Server 2016 Deduplication corruption.

There are multiple reports of data corruption with Windows Server 2016 deduplication. One is related to file sizes over 2TB. The other with the loss of checksum values. Microsoft is aware these issues and a fix is coming for these issues.

I quote Gostev

I’ve already received the official confirmation from Microsoft that this is the know issue (ID 10165851) which is scheduled to be addressed in the next Windows Server 2016 servicing update. There are actually two separate issues, both leading to file corruption when using deduplication on very large files. One issue occurs when files grow to 2.2TB or larger, and another one causes loss of checksums for files with “smaller sizes” – this is the actual wording of the official note, so I have no idea how small

What to do?

If you use Windows Server 2016 deduplication for backups, create new full backups regularly. Also make sure you do backup integrity testing and restore tests. Follow up on the update when it arrives.

If you use the for production data make sure you have frequent and validated backups! Design & operate under the mantra of “Trust but verify”.

Also, we’ve heard reports and noticed that Windows Server 2016 Deduplication resource configuration isn’t always respected. I.e. it can take all resources away despite limitations being set. We hope a fix for this is also under way.

Introduction

When you have Windows Server 2016 RD Gateway server and you expect to be able to import a configuration XML file you’ll might find yourself in a pickle when you are also using local resources. Because the import of RD Gateway configuration file with policies referencing local resources wipes all policies clean! With local resources I mean local user accounts and groups. These are leveraged more than I imagined at first.

We used to be able to use the trick of making sure the local resources exist on the new server (either by recreating them there via the server migration wizard or manually) and changing the server name in the exported configuration XML file to successfully import the configuration. That no longer works. You get an error.

As far as migrations go from older versions, they work fins as long as you don’t have policies with local resources. Otherwise you’d better do an in place upgrade or recreate the resources & policies on the new servers. The method described in my blog is not working any more. That’s to bad. But it gets worse.

As said,it doesn’t end there. The issue is there even when you try to import the configuration on to the same server you exported it from.That’s really bad as it a quick way to protect against any mistakes you might make, and allows to get back to the original configuration.

What’s even worse, when the import fails it wipes ALL the policies in the RD Gateway Server => dangerous! So yes, the import of RD Gateway configuration file with policies referencing local resources wipes all policies clean!

Precautions

Only a backup or a checkpoint can save your then (or recreate the all manually)! Again this is only when the exported configuration file references local resources! The fasted way to clean out an RD Gateway configuration on Windows Server 2016 is actually importing a configuration export which contains a policy referring to local resource. Ouch! I’m not aware of a fix up to this date.

For now you only protection is a checkpoint or a backup. Depending on where and how you source your virtual machines you might not have access to a checkpoint.

This rollup includes improvements and fixes but more importantly it also contains ‘improvements’ from June 2016 update rollup KB3161606 and May 2016 update rollup KB3156418. When it comes to the June rollup KB3161606 it’s fixes the bugs that cause concerns with Hyper-V Integration Components (IC) to even serious down time to Scale Out File Server (SOFS) users. My fellow MVP Aidan Finn discuses this in this blog post. Let’s say it caused a wrinkle in the community.

In short with KB3161606 the Integration Components needed an upgrade (to 6.3.9600.18339) but due to a mix up with the manifest files this failed. You could leave them in pace but It’s messy. To make matters worse this cumulative update also messed up SOFS deployments which could only be dealt with by removing it.

Bring in update rollup 3172614. This will install on hosts and guest whether they have already installed or not and it fixes these issues. I have now deployed it on our infrastructure and the IC’s updated successfully to 6.3.9600.18398. The issues with SOFS are also resolved with this update. We have not seen any issues so far.

In short, CU should be gone from Windows Update and WSUS. It it was already installed you don’t need to remove it. CU will install on those servers (hosts and guests) and this time is does things right.

I hope this leads to better QA in Redmond as it really is causing a lot of people grief at the moment. It also feed conspiracy nuts theories that MSFT is sabotaging on-premises to promote Azure usage even more. Let’s not feed the trolls shall we?

UPDATE 3: Bad and disappointing news. After update 2 we’ve seen DELL change the CSTA (CoPilot Services Technical Alert) on the customer website to “’will be fixed” in a future version. No according to the latest comment on this blog post that would be In Q1 2017. Basically this is unacceptable and it’s a shame to see a SAN that was one of the best when in comes to Hyper-V Support in Windows Server 2012 / 2012 R2 decline in this way. If 7.x is required for Windows Server 2016 Support this is pretty bad as it means early adopters are stuck or we’ll have to find an recommend another solution. This is not a good day for Dell storage.

UPDATE 2: As you can read in the comments below people are still having issues. Do NOT just update without checking everything.

UPDATE: This issue has been resolved in Storage Center 6.7.10 and 7.X

If you have 6.7.x below 6.7.10 it’s time to think about moving to 6.7.10!

No vendor is exempt form errors, issues, mistakes and trouble with advances features and unfortunately Dell Compellent has issues with Windows Server 2012 (R2) ODX in the current release of SCOS 6.7. Bar a performance issue in a 6.4 version they had very good track record in regards to ODX, UNMAP, … so far. But no matter how good your are, bad things can happen.

I’ve had to people who were bitten by it contact me. The issue is described below.

In SCOS 6.7 an issue has been determined when the ODX driver in Windows Server 2012 requests an Extended Copy between a source volume which is unknown to the Storage Center and a volume which is presented from the Storage Center. When this occurs the Storage Center does not respond with the correct ODX failure code. This results in the Windows Server 2012 not correctly recognizing that the source volume is unknown to the Storage Center. Without the failure code Windows will continually retry the same request which will fail. Due to the large number of failed requests, MPIO will mark the path as down. Performing ODX operations between Storage Center volumes will work and is not exposed to this issue.

You might think that this is not a problem as you might only use Compellent storage but think again. Local disks on the hosts where data is stored temporarily and external storage you use to transport data in and out of your datacenter, or copy backups to are all use cases we can encounter. When ODX is enabled, it is by default on Windows 2012(R2), the file system will try to use it and when that fails use normal (non ODX) operations. All of this is transparent to the users. Now MPIO will mark the Compellent path as down. Ouch. I will not risk that. Any IO between an non Compellent LUN and a Compellent LUN might cause this to happen.

The only workaround for now is to disable ODX on all your hosts. To me that’s unacceptable and I will not be upgrading to 6.7 for now. We rely on ODX to gain performance benefits at both the physical and virtual layer. We even have our SMB 3 capable clients in the branch offices leverage ODX to avoid costly data copies to our clustered Transparent Failover File Servers.

When a version arrives that fix the issue I’Il testing even more elaborate than before. We’ve come to pay attention to performance issues or data corruption with many vendors, models and releases but this MPIO issue is a new one for me.